I spent four years as Forbes' Girl Friday, which to me meant doing a little bit of everything at once. As a member of the Forbes Entrepreneurs team, I looked at booming business and startup life with a female gaze. I worked on the PowerWomen Wealth and Celebrity 100 lists, keeping my ears pricked and pen poised for current event stories--from political sex scandals to celebrity gossip to international affairs. In 2012 I helped to put two South American women on the cover of FORBES Magazine: Modern Family star Sofia Vergara (the top-earning actress on U.S. television) and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who is transforming the BRIC nation into an entrepreneurial powerhouse. Prior to Forbes I was at the Philadelphia CityPaper, where I learned more than any girl ever needs to know about the city's seedier trades. I studied digital journalism at The University of The Arts.
I left Forbes in November, 2013, to pursue other interests on the West Coast.

Every Man You Work With Thinks You Want To Sleep With Him

A new study suggests that—no matter how platonic you imagine a relationship may be—every man you know but aren’t related to is trying to sleep with you. And what’s worse, they think you’re trying to sleep with them right back.

Yes, really.

According to the research, reported on by Scientific American, which looked at 80 man-woman platonic relationships in “emergent adulthood” (read: twenty-somethings), men were more attracted to women than vice versa. Men also consistently and mistakenly assumed that their women friends were harboring a secret sexual crush of their own. The best part? The men surveyed didn’t care if the woman was involved in a relationship; their feelings and assumptions didn’t change.

And while this unique insight into the male brain is troubling for male-female friendships around the world—including your insistence that you “stay friends” with all of your exes—the findings are much more disturbing when put into the context of the workplace. What about the platonic relationships you have with your male colleagues? Do male supervisors believe their female subordinates are in love with them? How does that shape corporate culture, the assessment of female employees and women’s advancement in the office?

My gut tells me this: “Not well.”

Here’s the abstract from the referenced study, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships by researchers from the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire:

We propose that, because cross-sex friendships are a historically recent phenomenon, men’s and women’s evolved mating strategies impinge on their friendship experiences. In our first study involving pairs of friends, emerging adult males reported more attraction to their friend than emerging adult females did, regardless of their own or their friend’s current relationship status.

Now. If we accept this as true, that guys in their late 20s (and, increasingly, early 30s) are incapable of respecting platonic relationships, the scenario could play out something like this. You’ve worked your tail off all year, meeting quotas and volunteering for projects to prove your commitment to the team. You’ve worked late nights and even weekends to show your supervisor he can count on you. But your boss hasn’t gotten the message; instead, he’s filed those nights and weekends under “romantic pursuit” and your hard-work as pleas for his attention.

Stay with me. Because your boss believes you’ve been working for the last 12 months not to, say, score a plum promotion, but to get into his pants, he’s not going to be thinking about your career, and how big of a role his review plays in your long-term advancement. Not at all. Instead, he’s downplaying your accomplishments and deciding whether or not he should sleep with you. (Because remember, he already believes you’re into it).

And that, dear readers, could be the very reason you didn’t get your last raise.

What do you think? Am I reaching in thinking this study has any impact on workplace relationships? Has this happened to you? Tell me about it.

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I think that: 1) the abstract specifically states that they studied friends, not all working persons, and 2) these are sociologists, 3) the abstract specifically states that ‘they Propose’ not they found, not they proved, nothing like “Not at all. Instead, he’s downplaying your accomplishments…” you made that part up not the researchers. You also confuse sociology with physics, math, and chemistry. Given ethical problems with experimenting on humans, little is ever proven in sociology. Socialogy is a process of teasing out things, sometimes they are fact, sometimes they are not. Frankly, in the last couple of years the field of socialogy has seem a good number of political actors teasing out what they want to be fact. In this case I don’t see the authors doing this, but you absolutely, positively are. You do the field of sociology no good whatsoever with this. But then you are not a scientist. In this particular case you kinda let journalism down. In simple words, yes young men (older men?) spend a lot of time thinking about getting into your pants. Young women spend a lot of time trying to take advantage of that. All in all, it’s a pretty fair fight. Is it good for business? Who knows, who cares! Is having to breath air good for business? It doesn’t matter, we breath air, we have to. A business that doesn’t recognize this is in serious trouble. A business that can take advantage of that will thrive. A businessman who can only complain about it will wither up and die.

There is too much to say on this and not enough time. In my current work place I can say that this article would not at all make any sense. Everything is too professional and honestly, it’s hard to find anytime to talk to anyone. However, at younger work places especially creative more open businesses I find people do sleep with each other much like a high school. It would seem to be equal on both parts from what I understand from friends that I know that work at such places.

You have vastly, irresponsibly and (I think) intentionally misrepresented the data found. Like Alex, I can’t read the report. But even what you give us from the abstract comes nowhere near the way you interpret it. Harboring a secret sexual fantasy is a long way from being in love, or even from trying to fulfill that fantasy.

The research said men were more attracted than the women to their opposite-sex coworkers, were more likely to have a sexual fantasy, and more likely to incorrectly think that this was reciprocated.

That is, at worst, fantasy projection. It does not mean that the men are constantly looking to have sex with their female friends, nor does it mean they think those women are also constantly trying to have sex with them. You’ve blown this WAY out of proportion.

Maybe I’m just an exception to the rule, but in my life this didn’t happen. I am a young good looking guy who loves my wife and who my colleagues respect. When I was working in my previous job I was working with many women my age (late twenties) and younger. Maybe because I was underemployed I didn’t see it, but my wife would tell me that my colleagues wanted to sleep with me. I laughed it off as ridiculous. Well it became clearer that she was right.. I was shocked.

But I could see many of my male colleagues and bosses who were thinking about sleeping with these girls, almost inappropriate about it. Except the gay boss, he didn’t. He brought a bunch of Drama to the work force. I hated that job and just wanted to be professional and work up and be successful. LOL, maybe it is because most men are bored out of their mind at work. I chose to stress about how I couldn’t get ahead than just be bored and think about sleeping with my co-workers.

It is just as likely, or more so, that this would unfairly benefit women in the workplace.

The presumption that the attractions of nature hurt a woman’s chances are laughable.

Good looking people have been shown to out promote their ugly peers in every study, and not by small margins. If attraction has an effect, it is generally to the benefit of the person found to be attractive, irrespective of the person’s sex. Pretty waitresses make better tips.

Oh wow young 20-30 year old males want to have sex with hot women. This isnt exactly mind-blowing.. How about we examine cross-culture and compare the data with a country who does’nt advertise sex sex sex all the time. Here in america it is everywhere and then you wonder why young men carry it with them into adulthood. There is a reson why these type of studies are being done nowadays as pink floyd said She goes Up while he goes Down. As far as freindship is concerned I think usually the female is the one who realizes that having sex would mess up the freindship and the male just if asked in a survey would be like “Hell yeah id like to have sex with so and so.” To now try to superimpose this data into the workplace is outrageous I think of course you will have creepers. But good men more and more are just allowing women to come to them instead of actively seeking out a woman nowadays. Also who is alpha and beta doesnt always matter. As the best-looking male will usually win in a say “bar-encounter” The true alpha male is good-looking but not necessarily always the best looking of his group. A high value female same goes she is not always the best looking of her group but her worth is considerable and if realized prized